SELAELO SELOTA


Guitarist, singer and composer Selaelo Selota's music style is influenced by the traditional singing and dancing of the gold mine's migrant workers amongst whom he lived, the Pedi melodies with which he grew up and the jazz he heard at Kippie's Jazz Club where he was a cleaner.

He performed with the famous Ghanaian George Lee and Anansi and in 1995 Selaelo formed Meropa who appeared on the Grahamstown Arts Festival Fringe. In 1996 he formed Taola who played at the UCT Jazz Festival in Cape Town and at the Fin de Siecle Music Festival in Nantes, France to standing ovations. He was spotted by the managing director of the North Sea Jazz Festival who invited him to perform the following year. Selaelo also performed at the Brussels Jazz Festival that same year.

Selaelo studied and taught jazz guitar at the FUBA Academy and the University of Cape Town's College of Music. He regularly features as a soloist and is a composer and a session musician. He won second place in the Adcock Ingram Music Competition in 1996 and in 1997 came first in the Jazz category. In March 1999 Selaelo won the Instrumental Category of the Old Mutual Jazz into the Future Talent Search Competition.